I have more questions than answers. But I believe in something much bigger and try to share the little glimpses I see. Please share yours. Together we can create more - I believe.

Sunday, March 6, 2016

YOUR Tax dollars - how do you want them spent?

As we are inundated by rhetoric from all the political candidates, consider the decisions we are empowering our elected officials to make on our behalf. Follow the money. Listen to how they wish to spend our tax dollars in the future. To gain perspective, it's useful to consider how our tax dollars are spent now and where the tax dollars are coming from now.
Below is an overall look at discretionary federal spending from taxes other than social security and medicare. Those are separate taxes which the majority of Americans agree should not be messed with other than to ensure that we get the benefit from those taxes that we have been led to believe we would see. I would argue that we should be just as focused on expectation that ALL of our tax dollars are allocated in a manner that we expect. We should be looking at this chart and asking if these represent the priorities we expect.

Next, consider how our military spending compares to the rest of the world as shown below.

As I look at the two charts above, I wonder why we would need to spend more on the military? If we don't feel secure enough now, how could spending more money possibly help? Are we getting the Return on Investment we should be getting? What would we cut in order to allocate more to the military? Or how would we raise more taxes to pay for a larger military?

Below is a chart showing where tax revenues are derived. We should be asking if that mix is right?
Obviously, I have some opinions but for this blog, I'm just encouraging you to look at this information for yourself and as you listen to the political discussions, consider how these charts might look in the future. It's our money. We should be educated about where it's going so we can talk intelligently about how it should change if change is what we want.